Sociology never sleeps! I talk to a lot of people, and after several years here in our mountain twon, I think its starting to pay off. This week was hectic and involved lots of meetings and conversations, like this interview we did along side the Planning Secretary for our municipality.
What's happening is that everyone is starting to recognize the absolute necessity of 'developing ourselves'. Less and less people are hanging onto the illusion that someone, anyone from the government or any other entity will come and save us, will build our roads or organize our societies.
Its time to cast Expectrum Patronus Harry, no one else is coming.
We took a short course in the morning with Profe La Casa, about Territorial Organization. This is some concept about planning and development, together with the concepts and strategies used to bring it about and in line with the increasingly international best practices.
There is a lot to learn and discuss, but we are up for it.
Of course we had to make a stop on the farm, where we met up with Joselin. This man has a lot of experience in agriculture, and has agreed to help us plant and care for some trees around the border of the lot he is cultivating. By the time he is done with his rental contract, the trees should be tall enough to stand out and grow on their own.
Talking about tourism, here we are meeting with the Municipal Secretary of Tourism. He's got a database from the last administration of tourist offerings at a municipal level, and we are convincing him to give us a copy for our ecobank project. We think it should supercharge our efforts at documentation and the creation of the Tourist Information Point.
In the afternoon we finished with a meeting with a great friend and emmenance, Mr. Hernando. He runs a hostel that I posted about here. We will have to take a drive up to visit him again soon, there is much to discuss.
And in the end, there is music and singing, as we end another week of hard work. Being social takes energy, but it pays great dividends in the end if we can work together to build a better world.
I personally find singing and making music to be a very important activity.
And don't forget english class - tuesday and thursday, we are making solid progress on undoing the generalized trauma of learning english in Colombia.